Metallic Rouge, episode 1

The trailers and OP made it look like a Dirty Pair/Bubblegum Crisis mashup, but after watching it, I’m leaning toward a Kiddy Grade trainwreck. The buddy-cop lead girls are cute, the mechsuit battles are flashy and not entirely incoherent, and it’s generally well-drawn and animated, but the slave android thing is either poorly explained or utter bullshit.

We’re shown a vast underclass of android slaves who are considered completely disposable, each one of which requires a daily shot of juice that also acts as a spiffy drug for humans and has a massive black-market value. Each android is issued (?) one shot a day, which they carry around until they need a hit, or maybe store in an unguarded locker room at work. We’re also shown a massive hijacked truckload of the stuff, which suggests that thousands of workers are going to be tossed in the garbage when they can’t get juiced tomorrow, which would surely disrupt their ability to provide a functional and safe environment on Mars.

Verdict: mysterious pasts and secret agendas, sigh.

(Our Low-Affect Transforming Heroine would be more interesting if her mechsuit looked like this)

Molesting Magical Girls, episode 2

I decided to see how they’d follow up the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Hentai debut, and it opens with all three magical girls completely naked. Subtle, it ain’t.

(Our Increasingly Aroused Villainess wishes her costume were this conservative…)

Speaking of trailers…

Netflix has a full-length trailer for their production of 3 Body Problem, which is filled with scenes that have nothing to do with the book. The only two skiffy technologies present in the first book are something capable of projecting strings onto an individual’s field of vision (countdowns and childish insults), and a monomolecular cable capable of slicing a ship in half as it passes through the Panama Canal. The former is allegedly alien tech, the latter is the main character’s tech. Not the main character of the show; that seems to be Benedict Wong playing the gruff middle-aged detective.

If they never explain anything (especially The Two Protons), then it might succeed as a visually spectacular shallow SciFi experience. If they do, then it’s just another chapter in the ongoing pity fuck for Chinese SF fans who can’t get their hands on the good stuff.

Unrelated,

Every contract recruiter in India is now calling me from phony US VoIP numbers, with really bad connections. After being informed that I wasn’t interested in contract work, as he should have known from my profile, one of them even had his manager call back to explain that it was a long-term contract, and that the company typically converted to perm.

Anyway, my phone is once again set to send unknown callers straight to voicemail.

First we’re introduced to Our Fanatical New Hero and his party, viewed through the eyes of the latest member, Mask Gal. Then the OP goes all-in on Our Brocon Heroine’s transformation from unstoppable emotionless technically-alive Chosen Hero to slow-living fan-service object, with a side-order of Tisse-service; Red and Rit are barely in it.

This season is definitely all about the girls, with Our Devoted Waifu getting more bouncing in the brief goblin fight than all four Pon-pon girls got in an entire episode. And the camera enjoys panning up and down the girls, and framing conversations with sideboob. I suppose if they’re going to hose the story again, they should at least make it easy on the eyes.

Verdict: cheesecake sampler.

(Leafa-chan would fit right in, although she’d probably have to fight the busty elf druid; preferably in a bath scene)

Finally!

Frieren, episode 17

Yeah, right there with you, Sein. New OP song isn’t as off-genre as the previous one, but still doesn’t grab me. ED song is just new lyrics for the previous song.

Verdict: mildly worried about massive cast expansion next week, but they’ve earned my trust.

Solo Leveling, episode 1

Welcome to The Tutorial. We’ll be providing flashbacks, exposition, and cameos of characters you’ll learn to care about later, as well as a chance to see the consequences of poor decision-making in a dungeon.

On the bright side, despite the trailers and previews, the original Korean character names are used, which leaves me wondering if they’re producing two versions of the Japanese audio, with some lines re-recorded for the international audience. If so, I imagine they picked the Japanese names to match the lip flaps.

Verdict: showing several side characters early is a good choice, despite how random those scenes will look to people who haven’t read the source material.

(okay, I’m really just here for Esil; if they get that far…)

The Apothecary Diaries, episode 13

There are significant tone shifts in the new OP and ED, but the show itself is picking up right where it left off, with Jinshi and Maomao seeing each other a little differently.

Verdict: yes please.

Watching Paint Dry In Another World

(officially, Sasaki & Peeps)

They made a double-length episode that delivers an entire novel’s worth of exposition. One would hope this is so that every future episode can consist exclusively of magic, action, and cute psychic girls doing cute psychic things, but I kind of doubt it.

Verdict: he’s a magical girl and a crossworld trader and a newly-minted secret agent. And probably other things that I’m unlikely to stay awake long enough to find out.

Pon Pon-pon-pon Pon-pon Pon-pon

[not to be confused with Pon-pon-pon Pon-pon-pon-pon Pon-pon]

(officially, Pon no Michi; no one’s licensed this one)

The only active torrent seems to have multi-language machine-translated subs, which offends the folks on Reddit who know something about mahjong.

The “This Is Comedy!” background music is mixed way too loud, the exterior background art is obviously just a bunch of traced photos, and the character art is only occasionally attractive, and not terribly fan-serviceable. Except in the OP/ED animations and the trailers, which apparently used up all the money.

The girls are slightly more animated than cardboard cutouts, but their giant breasts are firmly glued in place. I might have seen one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bounce on Girl#4 as she got excited about the chance to join the cast; the rest of the breast physics are restricted to the OP/ED.

The less said about the “humorous” deformed faces and inside-baseball reference jokes, the better. And of course there’s mahjong exposition. I’m sure there will be a lot more, especially with a magical talking bird hanging around, with a very familiar voice.

Speaking of voices, I did not recognize Our Loud Speed-Reading Heroine as Miss Kuroitsu. Then again, I didn’t recognize her as Magia Magenta from Gushing, either.

(unrelated gaming girl is not this stacked in-game)

Note on Molesting Magical Girls

Apparently, Our Sadistic Heroine and Her Magical Playthings are officially middle-school girls. Which will come as a real shock to anyone who actually looks at them. I mean, the last time I saw a fourteen-year-old girl who was that stacked, her name was Sakura Ando [1, 2] (Ai Shinozaki was doing busty bikini work at 14, but she still had a lot of baby fat in her face, which made her look her age; Saaya Irie was of course famous for having huge boobs at 11, but it took years for the rest of her figure to catch up; Erika Yazawa’s boobs made a good living, but she was at least 15 when she bounced into Idoling!!!).

Meanwhile, the season-preview thread on the ANN forums is full of people throwing around the word “pedophilia”, with no grasp of the meaning of the word (hint: an actual pedophile would be repulsed by the sight of a teenager with the body of a Penthouse model).

One correction: I initially described the junior member of the bad-girl team as A, based on her brief appearance in the credits. Looking ahead, she’s an actual little girl who looks her age, but she doesn’t seem to get lewded. The other girls lewd overtime to make up for that.

(speaking of words that don’t mean what someone thinks they mean…)

Is It Okay To Eat Expository Lumps In A Dungeon?, episode 1

(officially, Delicious In Dungeon)

Y’know, for such a simple setup, it requires an awful lot of exposition up front. And the food-porn exposition inevitably leads to a shouty freakout by Our Not-Eaten Mage Girl.

Verdict: if it stays this talky, I’m out. Even the tentacles looked bored.

(dungeon take-home bag is unrelated)

Taking in the trash so you don’t have to!

Okay, I was a touch bored, so…

Molesting Magical Girls

(officially, Gushing Over Magical Girls)

Meet our cups cast: A, B, C, D, E, and F. Our Reluctantly Villainous Heroine is C, whose firmness is immediately displayed in her fully nude transformation scene. We only see Her Villainous Partners in the credits this episode, but they appear to be A and F. Our Briefly-Pure Magical Girls are B, D, and E, whose first encounter with the new villain on the block gets them thoroughly fondled by a summoned tentacle-gimp plant monster and then whipped so hard by C-sama that their asses are still beet-red the next day at school. Because of course they’re all in the same class, and we’re treated to expository lingerie close-ups as the girls change out of their gym clothes, plus a triple-titty transformation scene when they get the call to action. That covers about the first half of the episode.

It seems that Our Dark Mascot was correct when he intuited that Our Heroine’s obsession with the local MG team wasn’t admiration for their successes, but subconscious sadistic enjoyment of their suffering. Which she is now in a position to consciously inflict, and which makes her feel all tingly down there.

By the way, her name’s Utena (no relation); she doesn’t seem to have a villain name yet. HiDive is apparently airing the less-censored version, which includes perky nipples and closeup crotch-shots but silences some “sound effects”; those (and more detailed imagery) will be on the Bluray.

(unlucky magical girl is unrelated)

Combat Harem Dog

(officially, Chained Soldier)

In which peaches produce melons, according to the end credits. Anyway, Our Future Househusband is a loser who can’t get a girl despite being well-trained in the wifely arts, until the day he wanders into an expository lump and meets the F-cups of his dreams, which are attached to a sword-swinging supergal whose power is enslaving cannon fodder. She’d never tried it on a human before, so she’s surprised when he turns into super-dog and tears through slightly-animated target dummies. This also impresses her subordinates, who consist of two DD-cups and a loli.

TL/DR: they hire him as housekeeper and combat slave, and Wacky Hijinks are sure to ensue. Despite the huge boobs and the full-body french kissing, this was pretty tedious due to the exposition, power-kanji displays, and origin flashbacks, especially compared to how far C-sama got with her victims in the previous show.

(reasonable approximation of Our Dominating Heroine)

Just Die Already

(officially, My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me!)

In which Our Casually Evil Power Broker blows up the grownups, and Our Redheaded Twintail Leftover’s huge boobs act as life preservers. That pretty much covers it; the rest is mostly CGI, tedious exposition, and flashbacks.

(unrelated Christmas present is about the right size)

Unrelated,

Link pushed the wrong button.

(receptionist is Best Girl in Immoral Guild; can’t imagine what made me think of this show…)

…after getting her girlfriend’s permission first!

NSFW

Sasaki & Peeps: the voices

Despite the unpromising promo videos, I may have to watch the first episode due to the cast: Kyon, Tanya, Hestia, Rizu, Megumin, Momo, Boxxo, Ruti, and even Optimus Prime.

As for Pon No Michi…

The trailer somehow reminds me of another Pon video. Not as “animated”, of course.

Meanwhile, 44 years later…

Netflix remakes Shōgun. Honestly, my first cynical thought was to check to see how many characters they’d swapped the race and/or gender for.

(between badly-dubbed anime and the original mini-series, I think I can nail down the birth of my interest in Japan…)

Tearmoon, fin

After the rush, the padded ending! Honestly, if they’d decided up-front not to bring in more than the barest hook for a followup season (the serpent book on the table), they could have paced the last few episodes better, and made it less dependent on narration and exposition.

Verdict: flawed but fun, and honestly, what comes after this is where the source material starts shark-jumping, as

Rerun’s Special Magic, fin

“My power is overwhelming!”
   “No, my power is overwhelming!”
“Back to me!”
   “I pressed the ‘I Win’ button!”
“Yeah, nah, I got this.”

Followed by a debriefing, a training montage, a showoff, the sight of Our Bushy-Browed Valkyrie wearing a literal bush, and The Big Sendoff. And, yes, even Bunnyboy’s official military uniform has him wearing short pants and thigh-highs.

Verdict: the biggest question I was left with was WTF was up with their hair coloring; the nicest thing I can say is that I didn’t quit it in disgust or boredom like I have so many others recently.

(you-know-who appeared briefly in a panned still, sigh)

The Apothecary Diaries, episode 12

Reminder: there are mini-episodes as well (just noticed you have to select the ミニアニメ tab). (don’t bother with the auto-translated captions; find a sub if you need it)

And so we reach the epilogue to the first book. If you’ve ever wondered what anime would be like if they didn’t chop up 3-4 light novels to fit them into 12 episodes, here you go.

Verdict: more, please.

(I haven’t read the books, because I really like the show, and don’t want to get into the adaptation-deficiency mindset)

New Frieren trailer

Congratulations! You’ve unlocked the tournament exam arc achievement! In most other shows, a multi-episode competition with lots of flashy action would be cause for despair, but I think they’ve given us sufficient reason to trust them.

Another winter show I won’t watch…

Fluffy Paradise – worked-to-death office lady reborn in another world as a loli granted the unique power of being loved by all non-human creatures. NO

Ah, the uncomfortable truths of adventuring: endless side quests and charisma checks! As usual, lot of nice little moments, including advancing the relationship between Fern and Stark. Nice tie-in for Kraft (the character, not the mac-n-cheese company).

Verdict: imagine what seasons would be like if everyone else in the business started with good source material and treated it (and the viewers) with respect…

(I didn’t have a cake for my recent birthday, but not for this reason…)

Unrelated

I’ll be hosting Christmas supper dinner lunch, so it’s time to start cleaning the house and converting the present-wrapping station back into a dining table. I haven’t done any exterior or interior seasonal decoration except pulling a pair of Santa figures out of the closet, so it’s just going to be food and prezzies.

Not this sort of “Santa figure”, sadly

I made the mistake of driving half an hour to a specialty grocery store earlier this week, and forgot my airpods. I’d gone too far to just turn back, so I was forced to spend nearly two hours listening to (shudder) Christmas Music.

I took damage.

“We don’t know if we’ll ever get another season, but just in case, let’s toss another ball into the air.”

They trimmed a fair bit of content to get (almost) everyone into place and wrap things up cleanly, and it involved a fair amount of standing around talking, but it worked pretty well. Our Speaks-Truth-To-Power Daughter did most of the work, leaving Our Peerless Daddy to simply welcome her home and reunite with Our Wastrel Wizard.

Verdict: more, please.

(welcome-home specialist Emily is unrelated; this show could really use more fan-art)

Unrelated dungeon-food-porn note

Delicious In Dungeon was licensed by Netflix, who’s paying for a same-day English dub. There’s a lot of money being thrown at this one, and I’m just not seeing the appeal.

(speaking of appeals I don’t see, at no point during her story did I think, “I really want to see Aura The Guillotine’s softer side”)